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I hate the materialistic culture we live in. Its all about who’s got the best designer clothes, the biggest implants, the best car, the biggest plasma TV with surround sound. It’s all about money, money, money – in a dog eat dog world. Its competition all the way, nobody gives a damn about anyone else, and it’s a disposable society where if you don’t like it – throw it away and get a new one. That includes friends and relationships. Nothing is sacred.

I went to Cambodia and ended up in Phnom Penh, visiting the killing fields. If you don’t know what this is, the Cambodian leader Pol Pot was a communist, and under his Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970’s, thousands of Cambodian’s were brutally massacred. The guide showed me and the guys I was with the mass grave pits, and there were tiny fragments of bones still on the ground along with fragments of clothing. We were shocked into a gut wrenching silence. Hundreds of prisoners would arrive by truck, blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs, ankles shackled. They were told they were being moved to a ’better’ prison, before being led to the pits and executed. Tons of prisoners had been forced to dig these graves first. There was a big tree that had been used to put a stereo on playing loud communist music to drown out the moans of the dying people. The Khmer Rouge turned on their own soldiers for being suspected traitors, so there was a pit where the headless soldiers were excavated. Kids from the ages of 10-15 were brainwashed and recruited by them and made to execute their own families. There was also ’the killing tree’ - this is where babies and young children were grabbed by the ankles and smashed to death against the tree in front of their screaming mothers. Babies were also thrown in the air and shot at as target practice. These people were battered and clubbed to death using bamboo poles, hoes and clubs, drowned in wells, had their throats cut and suffocated with bags over their heads. There is a large tree resembling a pineapple and the branches are really sharp. These were also used to slowly hack away at throats, making the death last up to 20 minutes. It was very rare to be shot as bullets were deemed ’too expensive’. These people’s crimes? Being educated. Living in the city. Being normal human beings. The Khmer Rouge wanted everyone to be poor farmers with no education, they were scared to wear glasses as anyone deemed slightly educated was immediately killed. The babies and children were killed incase they would want ’revenge’ in later life, and to purify the country. These people lost entire families, their homes, everything they had strived for. They were allowed NOTHING - all in the name of the fanatic communists. Afterwards we went to Tuol Sleng museum. It used to be a high school but was taken over by Pol Pot’s security and turned into a prison. It was renamed S-21, and the classrooms were turned into torture chambers and equipped with torture instruments which were still there, along with extremely graphic photographs of the victims as they lay dying. There were corridors of tiny cells, and the outside was protected by electric barbed fencing so the prisoners couldn’t commit suicide, and the corridors were hallways of photographs of the victims, like in Police mug shots. There were small children as well, and one young boy looked just like my nephew, which tore my heart out and nearly made me have a breakdown! It has to be the most depressing but powerful thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It was the largest incineration centre in the country and 100 victims were killed a day. Walking in the rooms seeing the bed and torture instruments, knowing that countless numbers of people died in the rooms where we stood in the most excruciating agony was horrifying beyond words.

Now the point of all this is that the Cambodian people are the friendliest people I have ever met. They don’t have much, everyone has lost members of their family, some have lost their entire family in the last 30 years, and yet there is nothing they won’t do for you. Their smiles are infectious, their love of life is captivating, and they know how to have fun. Strangers in the street will go out of their way to help a foreigner looking lost – even though they speak little or no English, and you are welcomed with open arms into their country. Walk down a street in England and most people are too busy, or too uptight to even give eye-contact, we moan about foreigners and nobody can be bothered to help anyone – and yet we have all the materialistic things Cambodian people could only dream off. What does this tell you? Things- objects – they mean nothing compared to a good heart. I think we all have a LOT to learn from them. Compassion and manners cost nothing. And they are a damn site cheaper than the latest plasma widescreen television!

And now after you have afforded me that small rant, I couldn’t sleep a wink last night and decided to go skulking round the internet for something to keep me occupied, turns out the House MD Forum is not only a superior way to waste time but also fairly amusing!